Sunday, April 06, 2008

Sunday Stuff!

We have a big time "Asshole of the Week" award for you this time around!

Texas officials investigating a potential child abuse case said on Saturday 183 children and women had been removed from a ranch that is home to a breakaway Mormon sect linked to jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.

Texas authorities descended on the ranch this week in response to allegations that a 50-year-old man there had married and fathered a child with an underage girl.

The ranch is a compound for the renegade Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamist group led by Jeffs until last year.

In November, Jeffs was sentenced in a Utah court to 10 years to life in prison as an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old first cousin.

He is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on similar charges for arranged marriages there.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is proclaiming victory at last week's NATO summit in Romania after securing allied reinforcements for Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan.

The French have apparently agreed to send in more troops, and the Poles have a few choppers to spare.

Any help wherever we can get it will no doubt come as a relief to our beleaguered Canadian forces fighting on the bloodiest front lines of the Afghan conflict, their casualty rates by far the highest of any NATO country with boots on the ground.

But hold the victory parade for either Harper or NATO.

Strip away the spin, and reality is the U.S. is coming to the rescue in a war that is increasingly difficult to disguise as anything but an American-led effort.

Truth is, most NATO countries have been dutifully serving the cause in Afghanistan only as long as they didn't have to do anything dangerous anywhere their troops might get blown up by roadside bombs, or shot by Taliban guns.

The Bucharest summit didn't change that.

Even the French, who supposedly answered Canada's call for help in the dangerous southern Kandahar region, have wimped out as usual and aren't actually going anywhere near the place and so win our award for "Loser of the Day."

Instead, French troops are being deployed to the less perilous eastern area of Afghanistan, supposedly to free up U.S. forces there to join the Canadian efforts in the south.

It's not as though the Americans are so short of manpower that they need to be spelled off by anyone. At last count, U.S. forces already account for well over 32,000 of the 44,000 soldiers from the several dozen NATO countries deployed in Afghanistan.

On top of that, another full expeditionary unit of 3,200 U.S. Marines is en route to Afghanistan to mount a major offensive over the next seven months, mainly in the south where Canadian troops are fighting.

It seems clear that the Harper and Bush administrations agreed months ago they would publicly try to push the European NATO countries into doing some of the heavy lifting in the southern Afghan battle zones.

Failing that, the U.S. would do whatever was necessary to keep Canada from withdrawing.

When Harper said he was confident a deal could be reached at Bucharest to meet Canada's needs, he likely wasn't talking about NATO. No sir, it was our Winners of the Day," the United States of America!

As was reported more than two months ago, even as John Manley's advisory group was releasing its January report recommending the reinforcements and equipment Canada would need to stay in Afghanistan, the U.S. military brass was in Ottawa arranging to provide it all.

Fact is, despite all the political talk of success in Bucharest last week, NATO isn't answering Canada's call, nor is France. The Yank's are. Period.